Note
Date 14 December 2015 - 18 May 2016
Event ID 1045177
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045177
This fort is situated on a terrace immediately above the steepest and highest part of the escarpment forming the N side of the River Tyne gorge. The plan of the fort is unusual with rounded angles on the NNE and WNW giving a rectilinear outline on the WSW, NNW and a short length of the adjacent ENE side, but to the SE the lip of the gorge cuts diagonally across it, reducing the overall shape to something more akin to a triangle measuring 140m from ENE to WSW by a maximum of 100m transversely (1.1ha) within three concentric ditches. The latter are between 3m and 4m in breadth, forming a belt about 20m deep, and allowing for the presence of an inner rampart the interior would have extended to about 1ha. The only clear feature within the interior is a minor ditch possibly forming an enclosure at the E end, though a geophysical survey may show it traversing the belt of defences. This survey has revealed the plan in greater detail than the cropmarks, including two entrances in the WSW side, the southern with staggered gaps that create an oblique approach exposing the visitor's right side; the northern entrance is more ragged, the gaps in the inner and middle ditches staggered to expose the left side, but not matched by the gap in the outer ditch. The survey also confirmed a gap in the middle ditch on the NNW, and the presence of a palisade trench between the inner and middle ditches, which is apparently continuous across the northern of the two entrances in the WSW side and, slightly more contentiously, possibly turns outwards through the southern. These hints that the perimeter is multiperiod is to some extent confirmed in an evaluation trench excavated in 2004 (Haselgrove and Hale 2009, 109-14), in which the ditches, the largest some 1.6m deep, provided evidence of re-cutting. Two radiocarbon samples, one from a carbonised seed in the inner ditch, and another from birch charcoal in the palisade trench produced dates in the final centuries of the 2nd millennium BC, while birch charcoal from the middle ditch was dated 390-200 BC. While it is possible that there is a major Bronze Age enclosure here, it is equally clear that many of the Iron Age enclosures recorded by cropmarks along the Lothian Plain are occupying the sites of unenclosed Bronze Age settlements, and that the Iron Age deposits often contain residual material. In the present state of knowledge, the single Iron Age date from this evaluation is likely to be a more reliable guide to the chronology of the defences at East Linton than the two earlier ones.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3870
